April 12, 2009

PETA Shop Boys?

MRP hearts this story in a big way (it may or may not be because I’m a lady of a certain age that vividly remembers grooving to “West End Girls”). PETA has asked the Pet Shop Boys to consider changing the band’s name. According to one article:

The band has turned down a request from an animal rights group to rename itself the Rescue Shelter Boys.

The organization, the People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals (PETA), sent a letter to Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe acknowledging that its request, at first blush, might appear “bizarre.”

But, by changing its name, the band could raise awareness at every tour stop of the “cramped, filthy conditions” that breeders keep animals in before selling them to pet stores, PETA said in its letter.

Not rename themselves the Rescue Shelter Boys? I can’t imagine why, when the name just rolls off the tongue. Nor can I imagine why PETA missed the chance to ask the band to rename themselves the PETA Shop Boys.

Reading about this latest PETA project, I found I had missed another of their rebranding campaigns, perhaps even better than this one: an effort to get people to call fish “sea kittens” instead. The idea is that one would never subject a “sea kitten” to the things to which one subjects fish. According to PETA:

When your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head, it’s time for a serious image makeover. And who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?